Certain Kinds of Fools
by NeverMeltIce
Summary: Although many things about him are vague and mysterious, only this is certain: Jiraiya is not an idiot.
1. Chapter 1

From his perch on Naruto's hospital room's window, Jiraiya remembered Orochimaru's betrayal and sighed into the wind. "You're no ordinary kid, Naruto," he eventually said. "You have the Nine-Tailed Fox spirit. Someday you will face an enemy greater than Orochimaru. You must forget Sasuke."

Naruto's silence was the only response he needed. Jiraiya knew what the boy was thinking. He used to think it too. He still did, in his few vulnerable moments.

"Don't blame yourself. You must forget. To be a shinobi you need more than courage, strength and jutsu. You must learn to weigh your options and make the difficult decisions. You must be smarter. In this reality… there is no place for a fool."

Minutes passed until Naruto spoke. Jiraiya listened to his pupil – the burdened young boy that he was now so fond of despite their short time together – and felt the weight of his words. There was sadness, and hurt, and perhaps resignation, but more than those there was anticipation, determination and utter conviction.

Long ago, Jiraiya faced the same choice and backed down from the enormity of it. Naruto was different. In spite of himself, the old sage allowed a smile to creep onto his face, though Naruto could not see it. Jiraya lifted himself from the window ledge with a grunt and stepped onto the head of his patient toad summon.

"Very well," he said. "You are a certain kind of fool, and a fool as great as you might be able to handle this. Since you've disregard my words and you're determined to do as you please, I have no choice."

He turned to Naruto, and their gazes locked in mutual understanding. "When you're discharged from the hospital we will be leaving. Prepare yourself, Naruto." There was a poof of smoke, and then there was no Jiraiya.

Naruto broke into a large smile as he felt gratitude towards his mentor well up inside him. The foundations of the hospital shook from the force of his loud reply:

"Yes sir!"

…

_If being smart means what you say, I'll remain a fool my entire life._

…


	2. Chapter 2

On a cheerful summer day, after goodbyes were spoken, Naruto Uzumaki and Jiraiya of the Sannin walked out of the gates of Konoha.

Two and a half years later, dressed in shredded rags but looking no more worse for wear than the day he left, Naruto Uzumaki walked through the gates of Konoha alone. With barely-contained exuberance he leaped to the top of a long pole and shouted, "I'M HOME!"

He peered around from his lofty position, content with what he saw. "Man, this place hasn't changed a bit – wait! Look at that!" He laughed heartily. "Granny's ugly mug is stuck on the Hokage mountain!"

"Come now, Naruto. The first thing you do when you get back is to insult your Hokage? What about your dear teacher?"

Naruto laughed again and leaped onto an adjacent rooftop where Kakashi lounged, reading his signature book. He engulfed the older man in a bear hug before Kakashi could warp away. "It's so good to see you Kakashi-sensei!"

"That's great, Naruto. It's fantastic to see that your sense of fashion has gotten better on your journey."

With a sheepish smile Naruto scratched the back of his head and said, "Yeah, lots of stuff happened on the way back. I'll tell you about it later! Before that, I have a present for you!"

Naruto reached over his shoulder and, after a quiet popping noise and faint wisp of smoke, handed Kakashi a book nearly identical to the one he was holding. "That pervy sage couldn't make it back on time, but he gave me this to bring back to you." While Kakashi reverently took the book and began to read it, there was another popping noise and Naruto was suddenly holding some clothes: black sandals, pants, and an orange-and-black sweater, along with various pieces of under-armor that Kakashi peripherally judged to be masterfully crafted for Naruto specifically. Lastly, there was Naruto's headband – the blue cloth replaced with a longer black one, and the metal plate engraved with Konoha's symbol and polished to perfection.

"Well, I suppose we should head to the Hokage Tower and see Lady Tsunade and her new assistant, since you're looking proper," Kakashi said after his returned student finished dressing himself.

"No need!" Naruto bolted upright and squinted into the distance. "I can see them running over here. Geez, did I yell that loudly?"

"Loudly enough that I had to signal the ANBU that we weren't under attack," droned Kakashi over the pages he was absorbed in. He wasn't joking. Naruto had announced his presence with more than his voice. The sudden spike of chakra that appeared was more than enough to make his skin crawl. His one visible eye flicked up to Naruto before feigning disinterest and looking back down. "What have you been learning these last couple years?"

Naruto's grin was all teeth and secrets.

…

Ah, it was nice to see the fragmented Team Seven somewhat reunited, Kakashi mused. He stood in the center of their old training grounds, allowing a few more precious moments for Sakura and Naruto to catch up. He missed them, truth be told. With Naruto out of the village, Sakura mostly under Tsunade's tutelage and Sasuke doing god knows what in the recesses of one of Orochimaru's hideouts, a kind of depression had settled upon the Man of a Thousand Jutsu. He had felt reduced to redundancy. In one way or another his students had left him to pursue their own paths, and it was difficult to find a path of his own to follow until Lady Tsunade approached him.

Tsunade had promised him that he would be the leader of the reunited Team Seven when Naruto returned… if he got himself back into shape. Kakashi admitted with bitterness that he had fallen from grace. A decade ago only the most foolish and most legendary of shinobi would dare engage in combat with him. But after his discharge from the ANBU and S-Ranked missions, he grew out of practice and complacency settled in.

The last two-and-a-half years rectified that. He was better now than ever before, and finally worthy to lead the fragments of Team Seven towards becoming whole again. From a vest pocket he retrieved a scroll, which he artfully wrapped around his body before activating it, catching the attention of his two students. When the smoke dispersed he was clad in the light armor he inherited from the White Fang of Konoha, mixed and matched with pieces from his ANBU days. There was a sword holstered to his leg. His headband revealed his left eye, and the Sharingan slowly swirled as he regarded Sakura and Naruto.

He held up his hand, holding two bells dangling from their strings. "The rules are the same as last time," he said. His voice was sharper and more authoritative than anything his students ever heard before. "Come at me with intent to kill or you'll never succeed." He affixed the bells to his waist and waited.

In an instant Naruto brought his hands up in his signature hand seal, and Kakashi heard the clone materialize behind him accompanied by the sound of a knife cutting through the air. Faster than thought he reached down to the sheath on his leg and, for the first time in many years, drew the reforged White Fang and plunged it into the clone, dispersing it. He sensed Naruto approaching from above and turned upwards, pulling his mask down and unleashing a gout of flame into his face. That Naruto burst into an abnormally large cloud of smoke, and through it came a flurry of kunai and shuriken that Kakashi cut down with ease. When the smoke cleared, Kakashi stood within a ring of high-grade explosive tags. Naruto had not moved an inch; there was merely a smile on his face and one hand curled into the detonation sign.

Only ten seconds had elapsed.

Kakashi's eyes crinkled into a smile, and then he crumbled into dirt. Naruto felt cool steel against his throat and heard his sensei's voice from behind him.

"Nice try, Naruto, but you'll have to do much better than that."

"So will you, Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi's instincts blared at him, and he leaped back just in time to escape as the clone detonated with lethal force. Sakura, caught in the blast radius, also vanished in a poof of smoke while giving Kakashi a cheeky wave.

Ah, he realized with a glimmer of pride in his blond pupil, the explosive tags were inert decoys. The Naruto and Sakura clones were the real trap.

"We're not done yet!" Sakura yelled as she burst through the settling dust inhumanly fast with her arm cocked back, fist glowing dangerously.

With no time to guard or dodge, Kakashi warped into the thick forest and let an unsuspecting log take the hit for him. When Sakura's fist connected with the wood there was a sharp crack and the log vanished, instantly vaporized by the contact. Kakashi felt his glimmer of pride become a wave, and he idly hoped that his students wouldn't actually maim him. He silently retreated into the forest, watching as Naruto and Sakura nodded to each other and split up in search of him.

The hunt was on.


	3. Chapter 3

"You know, you both have done this test before, so you know that the point is to come at me together, right?" asked Kakashi as he faced off against Sakura. She found him remarkably fast, he thought. But then again, he wasn't trying his hardest. Not yet.

Meanwhile, Sakura stretched her body, not taking her eyes off her sensei. "We get the point," she replied, affecting an airy tone. "But we're just dying to show you how much we've grown individually before we team up and take you down."

"How confident you are! Your dear old sensei is a legend you know. Nations feared me almost as much as the Yellow Flash, back in the day."

Sakura smiled her most dangerous smile – a knowing one. "Oh, I know. That's one of the benefits of being apprenticed to the Hokage: you learn all sorts of things about people that no one else knows. My big forehead isn't for nothing. All of your recorded information is up here." She tapped her temple with a gloved finger, and then settled into a ready stance.

With a roar she burst forward and covered the distance between them, unleashing a barrage of punches that blurred in the air. Despite remembering the sad fate of his log, Kakashi's interest won out and he held his ground, eager to experience the full depth of his student's growth. The Sharingan in his eye whirled furiously as he predicted and perceived each strike, evading the blows he could and carefully deflecting the ones he couldn't. An unexpectedly sneaky blow to his briefly exposed chest forced him to bat her arm away instead of dodging it, but Sakura caught his wrist and was suddenly very much inside his personal space. She snaked herself around his arm and pulled back and down, attempting to rip his arm right out of its socket.

Unwilling to lose an arm just like that, Kakashi followed the force of her attack and backflipped, twisting slightly to deliver an armored uppercut to her chin through the small space available. It connected with a loud clang and Sakura's grip immediately slackened. Kakashi quickly backed away and worried that the blow may have been too dangerous for Sakura. It would have surely incapacitated the girl he taught two and a half years ago…

But Sakura was fine. In fact, she was more than fine. She was still upright and clearly unhurt, only looking somewhat confused. "What was that, Kakashi-sensei? Did you hit me? It felt like a snowflake landing on my skin."

Why that cheeky little – what the hell kind of training did Tsunade put her through? Kakashi wondered. He properly regarded the Sakura before him, fully absorbing every detail of her presence. She was no longer the little girl with relatively weak constitution, with only her intelligence and skill with chakra manipulation going for her. The young woman before him exuded athleticism, strength, endurance and confidence in her ability - a body and mind sharply honed to a level rarely seen in the Jonin ranks, let alone among her Chunin peers. Sakura caught him looking and laughed a little.

"You have no idea what I went through, Kakashi-sensei. Every day I trained under Tsunade I wanted to just lie down and die or kill myself for it to be finally over," Sakura reminisced with an almost out-of-place fondness in her voice.

Internally Kakashi disagreed. Even as a prodigy, the rigors of ANBU had made him want to die a few times himself. But he allowed that his student still gained many more levels now that he did at the time. She had a few more to gain, though, if she thought that talking would stay him from setting up his offensive. Buying a few more seconds for his preparations, Kakashi asked, "What pulled you through it?"

Sakura's voice was level, but Kakashi felt the weight of every word like an anvil on his chest: "Every second I was on my face, Sasuke walked further away from me. Every time I was knocked down on my ass, Naruto climbed another mountain. Every time I thought that I wanted to quit, I remembered the extent of your new training schedule, Kakashi-sensei, and how hard you were working for me. For us.

"And every time I forced myself to get back up, I felt myself change. Let me tell you, Kakashi-sensei, I'm not the weak, silly girl I was before. I've stripped all of that weakness away and replaced it-"

At that moment two hands burst out from the ground and wrapped around her ankles. Underground, Kakashi activated the same technique he used against Sasuke years prior and attempted to drag Sakura into the dirt until only her head was above the surface. Perhaps he would get points for irony? That was ironic, right?

But try as he might, Kakashi couldn't budge Sakura an inch. He pulled with all of his chakra enhanced might, but she moved not a single millimeter. On the surface, Sakura smiled savagely at the Kakashi she faced, then reared a fist back, completing her sentence with a roar.

"- I replaced it with strength!"

Everything exploded when her fist hit the ground. Kakashi beneath her feet was vaporized, and the real Kakashi that was standing away from her was forced to leap into the sky as the earth heaved to and fro until it shattered with a deafening sound. He marveled at the display of raw power below him. Everything in at least a two hundred meter radius was demolished. It's as if some giant beast had burst from the forest floor and threw a tantrum in the area. Before he could express his admiration properly, the dust parted and Sakura shot up to him like a glowing blue comet, preparing to land a devastating axe kick that would undoubtedly send him into the bowels of the earth.

Kakashi revised his opinion. Clearly Sakura needed fewer levels than he thought.

It was time to reveal one of his new techniques, Kakashi decided, before someone had the redraw the map of the area. Both of his hands exploded into clouds of lightning, and it made its way up until his arms were wreathed in the dense, cackling blue chakra. There was a bright flash as Sakura's heel came into contact with the shield. When the light dissipated, Sakura and Kakashi were back on the rubble that served as the ground, the former looking a little singed and the latter as calm and collected as always.

Sakura willed her body to move, but her muscles refused to obey her. She gritted her teeth in frustration. She had barely gotten started and she was already temporarily incapacitated. Grudging admiration for Kakashi wormed into her heart. She was well aware of his battle prowess, thank you very much. But seeing was believing. Kakashi was a powerful man years ago, and still when he taught her, but the Kakashi before her was more than that. Much more.

First Lady Tsunade, then Kakashi-sensei. She appreciated the opportunity to experience these legends firsthand.

For once in his life, Kakashi dispensed with his aloof attitude and spoke sincerely to his opponent. "You've come a long way, Sakura. I'm very proud of you."

Unable to move as she was, Sakura still nearly fell over in surprise. Kakashi wasn't so heartwarming... ever.

"Buuuuut… you still have a long way to go! See you!" And with that, Kakashi saluted lazily and sauntered off, ruining the moment.

Sakura regained enough control over herself to shriek at his retreating form, "When I find you, I will take that bell even if I have to rip your leg off! You hear me!?"

Kakashi thought about retorting, but decided against it; if he did, she just might decide to kill him instead.


End file.
